Naoki Yoshida Talks the Rejuvination of Final Fantasy XIV

If ever a phrase summed up the Final Fantasy franchise it would be ‘triumph through adversity’. Indeed, the series’ title itself offers a reminder of just how close we came to never seeing Cloud, Squall or Lightening gracing our screens. Back in the late ’80s, Square was a struggling studio on the verge of going under and Hironobu Sakaguchi, fearing that he was developing his last game, named his creation Final Fantasy. Thirty years on and Final Fantasy is one of the most recognisable IPs in the industry, often sparking debates as to which of its many incarnations is the best in the series (for my money it’s IX), but this rise has not come without difficulty, and Final Fantasy XIV provided perhaps the biggest misstep in the series’ history.

“When it was released in 2010 it was a devastating situation,” Naoki Yoshida told eurogamer, “The game was a massive failure.” While visually stunning for an MMO, many players found the game to be cumbersome and ill-conceived, resulting in Square Enix taking the unprecedented move of publicly apologising and pulling the game to completely overhaul it. When Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was released in 2013, Square Enix had gone from the laughing-stock of the MMO world to the developers of arguably the best MMO on the market, and Yoshida is the man responsible.

“When I took over the project the situation wasn’t that great. Many people didn’t think we could do it. It was a step by step approach – like if you build a bridge, you do it stone by stone. A strong relationship with the community is a vital part of Final Fantasy 14. Feedback from players is very important to us. We wanted to regain the trust from players – and that’s one of the goals we wanted to achieve. We set that as a policy in the beginning – the communication was really important.”

Amongst Yoshida’s plans for a more community driven MMO experience was the production of the Letter from the Director’s Chair series, through which he could personally keep players informed of what was going on with the game.

“That’s something that came from me myself, not from corporate. When we started Letter from the Producer, other teams weren’t really welcoming. I took a different attitude – I’m not like the corporation at the time, quite secretive and trying to protect themselves. I’m not like that. That’s why the other team’s didn’t like my approach. Not everyone was on the same page.”

Despite this reluctance from those behind the scenes, Yoshida must be doing something right as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn boasts a healthy 10 million subscribers, just 2 million short of World of Warcraft‘s 12 million peak. Yoshida however, isn’t prepared to rest on his laurels, and already has plans for the future of Eorzea.

“The two-year schedule is laid out – we’ve got the blueprint already, but there will be improvisation here and there,” “Because it’s a live game, if you try and say something about the future it’d be a spoiler – we have to protect that. It’s like a TV drama series – when’s the next season coming? We’ve got that planned internally. And of course the team is already working on the next expansion.”

Content however, isn’t the only thing that is at the front of Yoshida’s mind for A Realm Reborn going forward. He’d like to see more players on more platforms call Eorzea home.

“I’d like to open it up to as many platforms as possible – we want to include as many players as possible. Not just Switch – even Xbox, if it’s interested in this, we’d like to open it up. We’d like to have it on as much hardware as possible. Even though the hardware might be different, they will be playing in the same world – it has to have cross server function. That’s something that’s at the core of FF14, so we’d want to keep that as a policy.”

“We have no intention to divide the servers per platform – we’re working with one big community. I’m interested in other platforms, of course – I hope those first parties change their policies or mindsets. I’m an MMORPG gamer – I’d love to play with many people globally, and we’ve been talking to those platforms about getting it on their hardware. Positive discussion is ongoing. It’s not as if we’re not doing anything – we are actually talking to them, and the platform holders are showing their attitude in a more positive way.”

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is available on Windows, Mac OSX, and PlayStation 4.

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Avid reader and occasional reviewer, as well as player of all things table top. I've hosted events for Table Top Day in Drogheda in 2015, 2016 and 2017. If you ask nicely I'll tell you why Aquaman is the greatest superhero around.

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